By Eiko Arai
Source: Pacific Friend Magazine
Photos of Japan
December 1995
Shredded school uniforms. Lunch boxes with carbonized content. What could be more thought-provoking?
The individuals to whom they belonged left their homes at the usual time on that fateful day. They would probably have spent it just as they had always done. However, a single bomb exploded over their heads - and for them time stopped forever.
Just two examples of the negative legacy of the nuclear weapon that exploded 50 years ago.
The picture of the giant mushroom cloud raising untold volumes of smoke and debris is all to well known. But we have to use out imaginations to grasp the ghastly spectacle unfolded beneath that cloud.
The heat blast, the physical shock and the radioactivity - the power of a nuclear weapon stems form the combination of these three elements. Just one such bomb can devastate a whole city. Imagine what that enormous ferocity can inflict upon myriad individual human beings.
In the case of Hiroshima, at the moment of the explosion, a bright red fireball, much like the sun, burned for about 10 seconds. Those directly exposed to the flash sustained third-degree burns over the entire bodies.
A moment later, an unimaginably strong wind generated by the bomb raged outward to a radius of four kilometers from ground zero, hurling people and trees into the sky. Even buildings, however strongly built, were blown away by the blast, their sturdy steel frames bent and twisted by the air pressure like so much rubber. The wind peeled skin right off the body, leaving strips of it dangling from the wrists and ankles. Those still alive roamed about aimlessly like ghosts, skewered mercilessly by glass fragments scattered by the blast.
What had been a cloudless summer sky was now an ominous darkness. A few hours later, drops of rain "unlike any seen before" fell from the sky - dark, sticky and heavy. People didn't know it then, but this rain contained high dosages of radiation - an evil rain that consigned people to slow death.
Exact figures are not known, but an estimated 140,000 people are believed to have perished in the immediate aftermath of the atomic blast in Hiroshima. Likewise, casualties were enormous in Nagasaki. In both cases, it is well to remember, only a single bomb was dropped.
On that morning, one person was sitting on the stone steps of a bank, waiting for the doors to open at the moment the atomic bomb was detonated. The person died instantly, his or her body atomized. Where the stone steps were exposed to the heat flash they turned white. Where the person sat a shadow was left behind. Those stone steps with their almost photographic image became known as "the stone of a human shadow."
Nuclear weapons are said to neave a long tail behind them because the after- effects of a nuclear blast remain to torment people for decades.
Among the survivors, the incidence of leukemia and other forms of cancer is high because of the aftereffects of exposure to radiation. Fetuses in the mothers' wombs were no exception.
Even if one were somehow fortunate enough not to fall ill, those who experienced that living hell are condemned to live with fear carved deeply into their hearts. One such person is Koji Toyo'oka, the chief priest of a Buddhist temple in Hiroshima. Toyo'oka, who was a junior high school student when the bomb exploded, went out with his mother to look for his younger brother who had gone into town but faild to return home. When they found him, they could hardly recognize him. His face was swollen and the skin had peeled off. When they called out his name, he answered with a faint voice. He died the following day, but when they opened his mouth, they found maggots already breeding inside. The heat rays had destroyed even his internal organs, and the decay had then started. Basic human dignity was given a thrashing many times over.
For some years after the bombing, every time he felt a wind blowing. Toyo'oka couldn't help but recall the blast and the horrible scenes he had witnessed in its aftermath. He has been only once - and by sheer coincidence at that - to the Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima where articles left by A-bomb victims are on display. Unable to control his emotions, he rushed out of the museum immediately, so intense and fresh were his memories of the event itself. And so they remain, even today. Can we honestly say that the atomic bombings are just a thing of the past?
Many Japanese people, especially those residing in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, have striven to hand down their atomic bomb experiences for subsequent generations. But there are also many people who have chosen to remain silent. Toyo'oka used to belong to this group. But recently he noticed that younger people seemed to be becoming more and more indifferent to the threat posed by nuclear bombs. Thus, after decades of silence, he decided to talk about his experience. Today, he is determined to keep the memories of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki alive.
Of course, there will inevitably come a time when all victims of those atomic blasts will jave passed away. When that day comes, what will the relationship be between mankind and nuclear arms? The time to ponder this problem seriously is already upon us.
In Japan there are two museums dedicated to exhibiting the legacies of the atomic bombings: one each in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These museums are not designed to impress itu upon people that Japan is the only nation over which nuclear bombs were dropped. Rather their purpose is to continue to remind the world of the unimaginable horrors of nuclear weapons.
This year, 1995, the 50th anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bombs, is about to come to a close. In a way, the year marks a turning point. In May, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) was extended for an indefnitie period. Then in October, 1995, Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Joseph Rotblat, a British physicist and president of the Pugwash Movement, anf the Pugwash Conferences in Science and World Affairs "for their work to diminish the part played by nuclear arms in international politics and in the longer run to eliminate such arms." The Nobel Prize committee noted that Rotblat and the conferences have worked to get scientists to "take responsibility for their inventions." But since some countries are still carrying out nuclear tests, we cannot unreservedly rejoice over these developments. What is more, some nuclear powers still argue that nuclear weapons serve a positive function by restraining the outbreak of major wars.
However, might it not be that if we remain on the level of national interest when talking about nuclear weapons, we will never reach a conclusion? Each of us living in the repsent must, after clearly considering the real nature of nuclear weapons, ask outselves: "Can there be any justification in the world to renew their resolve never to let nuclear bombs fall again in any part of the world.
